Keeping the Chin Up

Okay, so admittedly, sometimes I get a little bit bitter about the house. It's hard not to, especially when it means saying no to the overpriced Kate Spade orange patent and peach suede heels with the ruffle on the vamp. Three years into a six-month project gets a body down, not to mention a soul. But a couple of things happened last Friday to remind me how important it is not to let the downsides of life become landslides.

First, was the bike ride to/from work, which involved passing the Holocaust Museum. I do not understand hate, especially hatred of whole groups of people you don't even know. It makes me cry. There was a really haunting contrast between the beautiful evening - the first in a week - and the scene of flowers and candles in memory of Stephen Johns, who was killed in his line of duty as a Holocaust Museum security guard by a racist, bigoted murderer hoping, it would seem, to end his life engaged in a terroristic killing spree. I feel so sad about events like these, because I not only do not understand how people become such monsters, but also because I inevitably feel like there is too much hate and not enough love in the world. And I wonder - were the "evil" people once sane? Were they so ill all along as to be predestined for something along this line, or is there a way you could look at their lives and pinpoint the event or events that then started a chain reaction of anger that ends on the evening news? Was there a way things could have been different? Are some people innately programmed to hate, or is it learned, or both? And how do we counter hate? Surely not with more of it. Is it enough to just be a good person in your small way?

On that bike ride home, thinking about the poisons of hate (and the forces in society that fan the embers of hate into flames), I was also listening to my iPod and have really been on a Paul Westerberg kick lately, and listened to the lines of "Let the Bad Times Roll" and the thread of my thoughts led me to start thinking about how avoiding the poisons of hate - in whatever its form - starts with trying just let the bad parts of life roll by. If you get too up close and personal with the bad things, you can get pulled into a nasty cycle of hatred, anger, and blame, until you are at best no fun to be with and at worst, you become crazy or evil, and there's a lot that's in between, but none of it is happy or healthy. This reminded me of my buddhist philosophy courses in college - which still resonate with me - about how we live in a world of samsara (pain) brought about essentially because we cling too much to our desires and the way we want things to be instead of accepting the things that are. Nirvana, which is often described as heaven, has nothing to do with clouds, harps, or halos: it is achieving a blissful mental state in the here and now. I strive for this healthy state - really, I do. But there's a reason why the people closest to nirvana are buddhist monks living on mountaintops in Tibet - I think it's pretty challenging to achieve this in the throes of modern life. Sure, if i didn't have a job, a spouse, friends, a house, family, and a community of which I am a part, then I might not be so sucked into a world of expectations and desires about how all of those things should be and suffer during the times when the reality of my life and my personal expectations for it diverge.

Like with the house. I admit, I once came across our old contractor's truck in the school parking lot near our house and stopped for a moment, thinking of ways to inflict damage and let me tell you, the movie in my head where I wailed and smashed felt good. For a few seconds. Until the part where the cops showed up and I went to jail, because I don't get away with anything - even in my daydreams. I am ashamed of this feeling, but know that most anyone else in my shoes would feel the same; and I can also say with all honesty that I walked on by without doing anything - not even spitting. The fact of the matter is, as my mom pointed out when she finally saw the project: It's bad, I know, but it really could be so much worse. (I hate to think of how for fear that thinking up the ways will give them life, but it's true, it could be worse.) We do, after all, still have a wall between us and the addition... And the more important thing to remember is that hate/anger/negativity is poison, whether it's directed at another person, a thing, or a situation. Which isn't to say I'm not going to sue the SOB, just that it really isn't good to dwell on being the victim of his boundless ineptitude and corruption or berating myself for bad judgment in hiring him in the first place - it's better to calmly draft the lawsuit, get through the problems step-by-step, and move on. And, when I need a place to release the insanity of the experience, I try to use this blog to make the bad stuff in my head either funny or to just let it out (as well as to share the good stuff, too), so for those of you who read this, I suppose you should be billing me for therapy. You can send your bills to me c/o Dominion Power, P.O. Box 26532, Richmond VA 23261-6532.

Anyway, to finish off the day, went to see the movie Up. It is not only the best animated movie I've ever seen, but it is one of the best movies I've ever seen, period. The opening sequence made my husband and I laugh out loud as this couple starts out their life together with this wreck of a house and the wife starts sawing boards in her wedding dress, and they start this Adventure Fund Piggy Bank, but then have to drain it when the car breaks and then again, this is where art imitated life - a giant tree falls on their house - and so (i'm not spoiling anything here) they never get to take the big adventure they planned before she passes away (which made me cry because it was like my biggest fear come to cartoon life). And then the movie takes off from there. It is a complex dramedy - you'll laugh, you'll cry, it's better than Cats. Do. Not. Miss. It. Anyway, I won't give it all away, but suffice to say, the moral of the story is to embrace life - in all its moments - as an adventure. I've attached the preview and I am trying to pretend the house has balloons on it and that this is one fun, crazy, scary, lively, lesson-filled adventure. So right now, it's the part where we're lost in the jungle, but I really truly do have faith that we're going to come across the beautiful waterfall any day now.

How It Came to This

This is a sign, right? If you walked out and saw this, you'd run screaming, right?

Unfortunately, it came too late. We were already in for a pound. About 40,000 of them. So I just stood in the alleyway and laughed until I nearly wet myself.

Not knowing where to start this story, I figured I'd go Tarrantino-style and start in the middle. Then I'll just go past and present as I see fit.

What you are seeing is about Month 9 of The Addition, depending on whether you count the 6 month delay in even starting the project as part of the timeline (I did not). After watching ducks paddle around in the giant hole this went into for a couple of months, SS Incompetent Contractor set sail pouring concrete and building walls (without first putting in the drain tile, but we'll save that for another edition) around May. The walls were framed (by non-SS IC people, including myself) in September. The roofer was scheduled to come the next day, when, on a balmy, clear, and windless night the neighbor's beyond-dead rotting 70 foot maple tree split in half and landed on our day-old framing job with such terrifying force that I thought it was The End.

And about an hour after the tree fell, the drought broke and it rained on our freshly-framed and sheathed addition for two weeks straight with no roof because the neighbor's insurance wouldn't pay to remove the tree. But I am jumping ahead.

This is some funny shit. You know why? Because we had spent months trying to get Dominion Power to move the *&@# power line underground. And we had offered to bury our neighbors' lines as well, but they refused (because if it later needed to be fixed they'd never find it!), which caused this process to drag on even longer. They ignored my list of advantages regarding a buried line, like not losing power during a storm (as we had during Hurricane Isabel). So, after four months of fighting with Dominion, they finally buried our line and moved the neighbors' line over a week earlier. And the falling silver maple took with it the neighbors' power lines. Ours, of course, was safely underground. And so, upon seeing this incredible display of karmic retribution/ridiculous irony for them and continued streak of bad luck for us, I craughed. That's right - I cried and laughed til it hurt.

The silver lining for us was that the tree also took down the Verizon line we had also been fighting to bury for months without success, and they came a few days later and finally did their work, and miraculously, our spectacularly-built framing incurred only a slight dent in the parapet wall from the tree. (Posting about the rain damage TBA.) Sadly for our neighbors and invisible to the eye upon initial viewing, their power line was snapped so hard it actually pulled the power from their circa-1940 (and therefore irreparable) main circuit box, leaving them without power for about 5 days until it was replaced. I truly don't relish the financial suffering and discomfort they incurred from this event, as this generates bad karma. But i still think that the whole scene would have won for Best Comedy in Home Construction.